The Culture of Death wants more blood:

A campaign to give elderly people in the Netherlands the right to assisted suicide said Monday it has gathered more than 100,000 signatures, hoping to push the boundaries another notch in the country that first legalized euthanasia.

Remember, this isn’t assisted suicide because you’re terminally ill and in pain, its because you’re old. They are already engaging in widespread euthanasia and infanticide in Holland on the flimsiest of excuses – doing this would make it a free for all (define “old” for me, please). It’ll only take the mildest of court or bureaucratic rulings from that point to assisted suicide for all.

Holland is already below replacement rate in population – except among their Moslems, of course – and this is what the culture of death gets you: an unwillingness to have children coupled with an unwillingness to live, or be bothered with elderly or ill relatives. Childless people without hope committing slow suicide.

This is modern, post-Christian civilization – a pact with death; an unwillingness to live; an example of just why Christianity rose so swiftly in the dying, pagan, Greco-Roman world…they, too, at last became enthralled with death and sterility. With the return of paganism we have the return of despair: there is, then, only one cure for what ails us.

This is what you get:

Church leaders are defending the last remaining Catholic adoption agency in England and Wales against homosexual equality laws that will force it to close. They say children in the agency’s care will suffer, charging that the government is trying to force the agency to disregard Church teaching.

Last Sunday, three bishops said that they were taking the case of the Catholic Care adoption agency to the High Court, the Catholic Herald reports. The agency finds homes for about 20 hard-to-place children each year.

Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds, Bishop John Rawsthorne of Hallam and Bishop Terry Drainey of Middlesbrough, said in a letter read at Masses that the government is trying to force the agency to operate “with disregard to the Church’s teaching on marriage and family life.”

Its not that they hate children, but that they love gay activism, more – with the added “benefit” of being able to attack the Catholic Church (always a favorite liberal past time). This is insanity.

No one is arguing that an adoption agency can’t adopt out to gay couples – all that is happening here is that a group which has worked for nearly a century at helping hard-to-place children find homes cannot, in good conscience, place those children in homes which inherently violate the group’s teachings. But that isn’t ok with liberals – no, they have to go all fascist about such things and demand either a surrender of conscience, or a surrender of charity.

Hopefully there is some rationality remaining in Britain – and it is additionally hoped that we’ll never come to this in the United States.

With the Great Sorba Issue, it is now time, I guess, for all of us conservatives to lay out our views not so much on homosexuality as a thing, but on the place homosexuality can have within the conservative movement.

At bottom, the Reagan Condition is correct: if you’re 80% with me, then I’m going keep with the 80%. Of course, homosexuality is a bit different than, say, someone disagreeing with you on the worth of federal funding for the art.

The left embraces homosexual activist groups simply because they view such as yet more acid to pour upon traditional morality. The utter contempt we routinely see of homosexuals, themselves, tells the true story of leftist attitudes. This isn’t about being anti-gay but, rather, about being anti-human. Anyone who can advocate for “abortion rights” is not someone who can then turn around and show genuine respect for people. All is political on the left – as is best demonstrated by the vile hatred which will directed against any homosexual (or black, or woman, or other selected group) who strays from the leftist path.

The right has tended to reject homosexual activists because most conservatives are strongly Christian in outlook. It has been difficult to separate out the person from the act – and doing this separation was not helped by some overt acts by homosexuals (it was a terrible thing – and entirely unjustified under any circumstances whatsoever – when Christians were pelted by condoms as they left Church. It didn’t help matters at all when some gay activists would enter a Catholic Church and desecrate the Blessed Sacrament). But as time has gone on the old poisons have faded – and the growth of conservative homosexual groups and individuals has broken down a lot of barriers.

I don’t think that anyone can say how conservatism and homosexuality should approach each other. It remains difficult to bring the right and homosexual groups together. Accepting individual homosexual conservatives is a lot easier. Treating all people, regardless of status, with love and respect is a requirement. At bottom, it is only a people with strong morals and a clear, Judeo-Christian outlook which can afford homosexuals essential tolerance.

For me, it is a matter of refusing absolutely to hate anyone; an understanding that I have no cause to act high and mighty as regards morality. And a determination, at this moment, that the defense of liberty trumps all.

Or, torture, as some would have it – Mike Potemra makes some trenchant remarks about it:

The question has been raised, Was it appropriate for a Catholic TV network to provide a platform for a torture advocate? In my view, the answer is yes. Marc Thiessen, who appeared on Raymond Arroyo’s TV show The World Over, defends the practices of the past decade because he believes that these practices are necessary to defend innocent lives…

…Irealize I run the risk of being accused of special pleading in this defense of Marc (and of EWTN), so I should probably point out that I disagree with him on the underlying issue. I think torture is a great evil, and that the resort to it in the past decade is a black spot on America’s record. But I am not in a stone-throwing mood against people like Marc, because I realize that the accusation that someone is not living to up to his or her religious creed is one of the lowest and least helpful arguments imaginable. For heaven’s sake, I — in religious matters — am now a rather liberal high-church Episcopalian, and I find even that pronouncedly lenient ethic hard to live up to…

…So the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak: I accuse myself. I have been dismayed by how rapidly the resort to torture has been undertaken in recent years, in response to much lesser threats than the one in my hypothetical. (Two or three incompetent pantybombers in a decade doth not a Hitler make.) But I recognize that my difference from Marc and the others on his side of this discussion is one of degree, not of kind. And there are other reasons to ask people for generosity of spirit – notably because we may have need of it ourselves…

To me, its just doesn’t rise to the level of immorality when we compel terrorists to divulge information. Terrorists, in my view, simply do not have a right to remain silent – they must tell us what they know. Physical coercion should be used sparingly, but if that is what it takes to get them to talk, then that is what a proper understanding of morality requires in such situations.

What we have in terrorists are non-State actors who yet pose a threat to not just an individual or group of individuals, but to a whole people. This is different in kind from a bank robber who is a risk to all banks or even a murderer who is a threat to a particular person at a given time. The terrorists, if allowed the time and resources, would not just rob a bank – or even 10,000 banks. They would not just commit a murder – or even 10,000 murders. They will kill every last one of us, if they can. There is no limit to the amount of damage they may do – and unlike chasing down a murderer, once we’ve caught one of them we have only barely – and temporarily – diminished the threat.

In order to effectively combat the terrorist threat we must, as far as possible, learn what they know and what their plans are. There are many means of doing this, but the most effective way is to draw the information out of those best informed: the terrorists, themselves. When we capture a terrorist, it is a golden opportunity to gain a distinct advantage over the threat – and we must take full advantage of it, even if the captive proves reluctant to come clean. And do keep in mind that the more information we gather from one terrorist will not only save the lives of our own, but of the terrorist’s own, too. Thwarted terrorist plans means, also, a smaller number of dead terrorists, in the long run.

It is a dereliction of duty – an act of immorality – for someone who can obtain information about this threat to refuse to do so on the imagined grounds that everyone, all the time and everywhere, may not be coerced in to giving information. Some people might ask, “where do you draw the line?”. Meaning, of course, that if we allow one terrorist to be waterboarded, then we are presumptively defenseless against the claim that we must rip out the fingernails of someone who refuses to spill the beans about his neighbors tax return. To such arguments I answer: are you stupid?

I’m not. I can draw the line right where human decency requires it. I want information out of these terrorists – I don’t want so much as a hair on their heads harmed, if it can be in any way avoided. I don’t need to boil a terrorist in oil – in fact, doing so is counter-productive because a boiled terrorist cannot provide me the information I require. I want the terrorist to talk – and talk truthfully, as far as can be determined. Most of the time more regular interrogation methods will work – some times, however, it takes a bit more.

For us Christians, the greatest commandment is to love God with all our might, and love our neighbors as ourselves. Would I be loving my neighbor if I allowed my neighbor – in this case, a captive terrorist – to with hold information which may lead to the deaths of thousands? In my view, I’m not loving anyone – I’m guilty of cowardice, if I do such a thing.

I can’t help that some of my brothers and sisters make bad decisions – all I can do is react to the results of those decisions, and do my best to limit the overall damage. A man who is determined to fly a plane in to one of our buildings is someone who had gone severely wrong – the least worry we have is that it might require waterboarding to get him to talk. Our larger worry is how to change things so that it is less likely for a man to make such a choice – but part of that making change requires that any captives talk and tell us everything they know.

Did you see all the massive coverage of that child abuse scandal in the public shools?

No? Neither did I…

In 2004, Hofstra University professor Dr. Carol Shakeshaft published a report for the United States Department of Education titled “Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature.” It was presented to Congress as part of the No Child Left Behind Act. In it, Shakeshaft stated:

As a group, these studies present a wide range of estimates of the percentage of U.S. students subject to sexual misconduct by school staff and vary from 3.7 to 50.3 percent. Because of its carefully drawn sample and survey methodology, the AAUW report that nearly 9.6 percent of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career presents the most accurate data available at this time.

According to a study she did of abuse complaints against Catholic priests over a five decade period she concluded that “…the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.” (emphasis added)

And here’s the real kicker – the Church has been getting rid of the bad apples and setting in place systems which will go far towards ensuring there is never a repeat of that horrible scandal. What are the public school systems doing? Well, I’m sure when someone actually get arrested for child molestation, they get fired…eventually.

Here’s what it is: Catholic priests doing wrong = fits liberal narrative. Public school teachers doing wrong = doesn’t fit liberal narrative. And thus the far larger scandal of sex abuse by teachers goes unreported – and unresolved.

When I say we live in an Age of Lies, this is what I’m on about – its not necessary that a direct falsehood be told but, more important, that the full truth is suppressed. The key to societal sanity is to seek the truth – all of it, all the time, no matter how much it hurts. Until the MSM starts telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, it will continue to decline…and as long as we, in society as a whole, don’t insist upon being told the whole truth, so will our nation continue to decay.

The truth really shall set you free – but no one ever said it would be painless. But better free and in pain than numbed by lies, as far as I’m concerned.

HAT TIP: Domine, da mihi hanc aquam!

From Victor Davis Hanson:

…We inherited a wonderful infrastructure from our parents. A superb system of politics and economics was likewise given to us at birth. Many of us try to copy our grandparents and parents whose values and work ethic we increasingly eulogize. But against all that is that Roman notion of luxus, untold wealth and leisure that we see juxtaposed with shrill cries and accusations that we are too poor, exploited, and in need of someone else’s income. The wealthier we become, the louder and angrier we become that we are not even more wealthy.

In short, what ruined Rome in the West? Lots of things. But clearly the pernicious effects of affluence and laxity warped Roman sensibility and created a culture of entitlement that was not justified by revenues or the creation of actual commensurate wealth — and the resulting debits, inflation, debased currency, and gradual state impoverishment gave the far more vulnerable Western Empire far less margin of error when barbarians arrived, or rival generals marched on Rome. For a while the Romanization of the wider Mediterranean subsidized this ennui, but eventually the old western and southern provinces neither could protect what they had created nor could continue to be as productive as in the past nor believed that being Roman was any better than the alternative.

The historian Will Durant, after surveying the decay of Rome in the 1st century AD, noted that “by its own exhausted will, the great race (of Romans) was beginning to die”. That is important – decline is a choice, not a fate. We are touched with decay while the rest of the western world is shot through with it. Thus far, the people of what was once called Christendom are choosing to die. Meanwhile, even those states which might want to supplant us have also started to choose to die – but being further back on the road, there is that prospect of a brief supremacy.

It was not a perversity on his part that St. Francis said, “Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty”. While we look back at the 13th century as a time of grinding poverty, the fact is that St. Francis was of a wealthy family and living in a society growing highly prosperous – perhaps as well off as anyone had been since the height of Rome. St. Francis knew, though, that wealth can be a killer – a killer of courage, mercy and love. Sublime poverty is what keeps a person – and a society – healthy.

So, are we all to burn our cash and go live as peasants in the countryside? It is a choice of “farm or die”? That depends on how one wishes to look at it – the real choice is between doing things and doing nothing. If we continue to do more and more nothing, then we’ll get progressively weaker, and eventually die. Not in a cataclysm, but in a slow drift to national senility and an eventual breakup of the nation and our replacement by anyone who wishes to do things on the land we slept upon.

One of the hardest thing for us to wrap our minds around is that, all along, sublime poverty was provided for us. Remember that our federal government is directly indebted for nearly $13 trillion dollars. The “most wealthy” nation spent $13 trillion it didn’t have – and when you tack on personal and State government debt and combine it with the unfunded mandates, we’re many tens of trillions of dollars in the hole. The harsh fact is that we weren’t as rich as we thought we were.

To be sure, we were vastly wealthy – and in very real terms, we retain such wealth. Its in our soil and in our ability to invest in sweat equity. We haven’t wanted to sweat and we’ve listened to idiots about the environment and thus closed off vast amounts of native wealth. But we never were rich enough for all those millions of people to get “free” health care. Never were rich enough for kids to get government grants to go to college. Never were rich enough to provide welfare for tens of millions of people. Our politicians talked of “how can the richest nation in the world not afford X” and we nodded our heads like morons – never fully understanding that being the richest nation in the world isn’t the same as having unlimited wealth for whatever struck our fancy.

We must get back to work. We must, in the end, have the courage to tell a high school graduate that he’s going to have to go to work and entirely pay for college on his own – or not go to college. We’re going to have to tell the shiftless poor that it is time to shift for themselves. We’re going to have to be brave enough to say to a person, “its sad you can’t afford that quadruple bypass”. We don’t have an endless supply of money – we do have an endless supply of resources and ability to work; an endless supply of love and generosity (maybe that oldster’s friends can pool their resources to pay for the bypass?), but we don’t have an endless supply of money. Sublime poverty sits at our knee, waiting for us to wake up.

And if we do wake up and get back to work and understand that all our whims will not be granted, then we will cease to die. We will become what we were – the America of our grandfathers will return. The choice is ours – live, or die. I chose to live and I’m beginning to believe that a large majority of my fellow Americans wish to live, too and understand what it will require.

Cross Posted at Noonan for Nevada

Ed Morrissey notes:

…The study in Cambridge showed that 17% of patients assumed to have no brain activity beyond involuntary impulses actually show cognitive understanding using an MRI to map brain responses to questions asked by researchers. None of the 17% had brain injury due to hypoxia, the underlying cause of the injury to Terri Schiavo, whose case became a national political crisis a few years ago, but the implications of this study are still horrific…

…The new diagnostic ability that this study suggests could mean that patients once dismissed for years as nonresponsive have actually had an interior life without any ability to recognize it or communicate it to the outside world. It could also mean that previous decisions to suspend care may have been made in error, although entirely in good-faith belief that the person inside had utterly vanished.

This could change all of our perceptions on the victims of tramautic brain damage, as well as offer hope for those who remain trapped but conscious inside unresponsive bodies.

Our point, as pro-lifers, is that given we do not have – and cannot have – 100% knowledge of the interior condition of a human being, it is always better to err on the side of life. This is outside of theology – as a Christian I believe that the soul comes in at the moment of conception and goes out at the moment of physical death; but nobody has to subscribe to this view if they don’t wish to. But even outside of that, we just don’t know.

The Culture of Death is very sure of itself. Most lies are. And, additionally, most lies are very vehement in self defense. We on the pro-life side, being people of faith, are quite capable of admitting doubt. Was Terri Schiavo’s mind (soul, if you will) already departed before they removed the feeding tube? We don’t know. Didn’t know then. Don’t know now.

You could slice and dice her brain post-mortem to your heart’s content and you still won’t get that answer because while we have a good deal of knowledge of how the organ called the brain works, we haven’t the foggiest notion of how mind works. Disbelieve in God if you will – but perhaps that “persistent vegetative” person is actually thinking of things? Still having a life; and a life no one is permitted to take without just cause. Unless and until someone figures out how to measure my thought which put a bit more oregano in to the spaghetti sauce – and tell me where, precisely, it is stored for me to recall days later while writing a blog post – there is just no way anyone can say whether a person who has physical life is aware or not at some level.

Err on the side of mercy. Err on the side of love. Err on the side of life.

UPDATE: And the global Culture of Death suffers a defeat in Costa Rica.

Profligacy and death go ill together:

Bankers are not the cause of the global economic crisis, according to the president of the Institute for the Works of Religion. Rather, the cause is ordinary people who do not “believe in the future” and have few or no children.

“The true cause of the crisis is the decline in the birth rate,” Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, said in an interview on Vatican Television’s “Octava Dies.”

He noted the Western world’s population growth rate is at 0% — that is, two children per couple — and this, he said, has led to a profound change in the structure of society.

“Instead of stimulating families and society to again believe in the future and have children […] we have stopped having children and have created a situation, a negative economic context decrease,” Gotti Tedeschi observed. “And decrease means greater austerity.”

“With the decline in births,” he explained, “there are fewer young people that productively enter the working world. And there are many more elderly people that leave the system of production and become a cost for the collective.

And, of course, tens of millions of abortions – we’ve lost a great deal because we wanted to be rich without working and loved without family responsibility. I plead guilty, guilty, guilty.

We must return to sanity – to a willingness to do hard, physical work; to commit to one person and raise as many children as God provides; to put off personal gratification in favor of having a gift to leave our children. If we do this, then we will be happy – and prosperous, in to the bargain. If we don’t do this, then we’ll eventually die out.

The choice is ours – decline is never an thing of fate but an act of will.

Geesh:

Harry Knox, a member of President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, has stood by his past comment that Pope Benedict XVI is “hurting people in the name of Jesus.”

Knox, a former licensed minister of the United Methodist Church and a leader with the homosexual activist group Human Rights Campaign (HRC), originally made his comments in March 2009 in response to Pope Benedict’s comments about the effectiveness of condoms in fighting AIDS in Africa…

…In March 2009, Dr. Green told CNA that researchers cannot find an association between more condom use and lower HIV rates. He has also written that programs to increase fidelity in relationships and to reduce the number of sex partners are effective.

Previously, Knox has described Pope Benedict XVI and certain Catholic bishops as “discredited leaders” because of their opposition to same-sex “marriage.”

Though acknowledging the Knights of Columbus’ “good works,” he also called the Catholic fraternal order’s members “foot soldiers of a discredited army of oppression” because of the organization’s support for the successful California ballot measure Proposition 8…

Way to change the tone, there, and bring us all together. I feel the love. Is there anyone in the Obama Administration who isn’t an ass or a fool?

Anyways…

We know the drill – for the left, the way to cure the problems caused by immorality is to make immorality more prevalent. Thus the leftist response to teen pregnancy is to teach teens how to have sex and their response to the spread of AIDS is to work out ways where African men can remain promiscuous but feel like they are safe. We’re the “discredited army of oppression” because we dare to point out that the sure fire way to cure the problems caused by immorality is to try and be a bit more moral.

While we are called to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, in practical terms we are only expected to try, day by day, to do a little better than the day before. Liberals bought the lie that we can be as gods, and when this boomerangs on them their response is to get angry with those of us who pointed out the error. Meanwhile, people are dying – but that is ok because they are poor, brown-skinned people that liberals never meet in Manhattan or DC or San Francisco…their deaths might be bad, but more important is to adhere to the notion that self-control is the worst thing possible.

And, of course, these people have found a home in the Obama Administration. How am I, as a Catholic, supposed to work with such people? I realize that no matter how gross the insult I am to forgive – and that is something I can and will do. But when Obama says he wants people like me to join him in partnership to make America better, what am I supposed to do? Grin like an idiot when some fool makes a bigoted statement about me and mine?

I don’t think so. There are many steps President Obama can take to make it more likely that Christians of an orthodox stripe will give him a hearing – and one of the first he can do is get rid of Harry Knox.

A fascinating article on the intellectual battle of belief and unbelief. A sample:

…Harris is not aiming his barbs at Islam in this book, but at the Christians of his own nation — not the mushy ones, the amorphous silt swirling in mainstream denominations, but those who actually believe. His challenge is simple and accurate and hence refreshing: “If one of us is right, the other is wrong. The Bible is either the word of God, or it isn’t. Either Jesus offers humanity the one, true path to salvation (John 14:6), or he does not . . . . If Christianity is correct, and I persist in my unbelief, I should expect to suffer the torments of hell.”

Ah!, a breath of fresh air indeed. Harris is eminently disagreeable, and that is a true virtue. Here is a person with whom it is worth disagreeing, someone who takes Christianity more seriously than most Christians. Far better to spar with a clear-headed atheist who agrees that we disagree than a muddle-headed Neville Chamberlain type who declares sharp disagreements impossible because sharpness itself is an illusion. On to battle!…

Very much worth the reading.

As for me, I don’t think there are any real atheists out there – it just doesn’t make any sense…and the effort required would be just too bothersome. You’d have to be continually on guard against even the least bit of the supernatural…just allow one bump in the night, and that whole atheism thing is out the window.

But even outside of that, it is plain as a pikestaff that our mind – as differentiated from the physical organ we call our brain – just doesn’t fit neatly in to the natural world. It is an invader from outside – it is supernatural. In theory, you can trace back the chain of causation from that pebble you see in your yard right back to the beginning…but you can’t ever figure out how a mind will choose between mowing the lawn and heading out for a game of golf – neither of which actions logically follow from any other action, and neither of which are required in a Darwinian sense for survival.

Interesting given how much propaganda in favor of immorality our young people face every day:

According to a recent poll conducted by the Marist Institute for the Knights of Columbus, young Americans are increasingly doubting the nation’s ethical standards in business as well as the government’s ability to handle the economy.

“A year into the Obama administration, we find that Americans – and younger Americans – are having a crisis of confidence,” said Carl Anderson, CEO of the Knights of Columbus, on Thursday.

The poll found that American adults and Millennials (those between 18 and 29) are worried about their careers in this economy, opposed government regulation and business greed, and even felt that the country is headed in the wrong direction morally.

“People are increasingly pessimistic about the government’s ability to handle the economic crisis and a majority believes that increased government regulation will hurt the economy,” said Anderson…

…On the issue of the moral status of the nation, 67 percent of American adults and 60 percent of Millennials believe the country is headed in the wrong direction…

Here is a generation betrayed – a generation which knows that things are wrong and is disturbed to its core about what is going on. But, as young people, they are probably just waiting for the call. A lot of them probably thought that Obama was “it” – and they are clearly increasingly disappointed in what they got. On the plus side of this disappointment, the mask is now torn off the mushy-headed, liberal/left propaganda which has appealed so strongly to youth – youth which desires to serve and believe, but which lacks experience and judgment to always see through a clever scam. Like Obama.

Now is the time for the Truth to be told – boldly. If we can tell the young that their faith should be in God, family and the America of the Founders, then we can have the fire to rescue ourselves from our current morass. We must, though, be good enough for the young – we must discard any allegiance to the bankers and bureaucrats who brought us here. We must show ourselves more faithful in our vows than we’ve ever been before – youngsters can be fooled, but once they see a hypocrite, there’s no chance of convincing them a second time.

Youth is always at our service – full of fire and self-sacrificial zeal. The question is always about who will lead the youth? We can, if we prove ourselves worthy. The old, false gods of liberalism have failed – if we can bring the truth and act upon our beliefs, we can win this generation, and restore America.

As we’ve watched the tragic events unfolding in Haiti this past week we must not get trapped in to thinking that this was just an earthquake. That the terrible suffering we see there is the result of an “act of God”. In fact, to even start to think in such terms is to place the blame on God for things which are own fault.

To be sure, no one could have predicted the earthquake would happen when it did. But we can predict, with 100% accuracy, that an earthquake would eventually happen right where it did. We know the way our world works on that level – we have developed sufficient knowledge to simply know that at some time or another, the ground beneath us will shake violently.

Because we know this, we here in the United States – and especially in the more earthquake-prone areas – have continually refined our construction techniques to account for the inevitable shaking of the earth.

In 1994 the earthquake in Northridge, California was a bit less powerful than the Haiti quake but had one of the highest “ground acceleration” factors ever recorded – and that is what really does the damage. This was a devastating quake – about $20 billion in property damage was done. And 72 lives were lost. 72. Low estimates in Haiti are for 50,000 dead. Why the big difference?

Human failure.

The technology required to make a building withstand an earthquake is not cutting edge – and not terribly expensive, either. It does cost, but it costs far less than the cost of rebuilding once the place is leveled – and that is outside the human cost, in lives, once the building falls. Why aren’t buildings in Haiti so constructed? Because the contractors won’t build them so, and the government can be bribed to ignore the building codes, and the people of Haiti do not insist that their government work in the interests of the people.

So, its all Haiti’s fault? Not at all. For two centuries Haiti has been a grossly misgoverned nation. It is not possible to speak of any time in Haitian history that the Haitian government did credit to itself – nor is there a time in Haitian history where we can really point out selfless heroism in defense of the people on the part of the people of Haiti. And the rest of the world – knowing that this is the case – never stepped in. Never set about bringing justice to a blighted land.

After all, its a poor nation and it doesn’t have any natural wealth to speak of and, hey, out of sight and out of mind. Haiti is in sight, today, because so many people have died. But a week from now it will start to fade from view and as long as there is no new disaster, a year from now Haiti will be completely out of our minds. But they will still be our brothers and sisters living there and its almost a certainty that they’ll be just as badly misgoverned in January of 2011 as they were right now – meaning that if another earthquake, or a hurricane, were to strike, we’d be right back there, again, trying to rescue the people.

It is not possible for us to fix all the world’s problems. Only God can do that. But there is this to think about. When we speak of our sins in Church, we don’t just talk about what we did wrong, but also about what we failed to do right. It isn’t enough that I refrain from stealing – I must also help that poor beggar at my door. Can I feed all the beggars, all by myself? No, but if God presents a beggar to me, I have an obligation to help. Haiti has been presented to us.

Once I have given the beggar a sandwich, is my moral obligation complete? If all I have is a sandwich, it is. But if I have more, then my obligation continues. I don’t have an obligation to actually work for the beggar, but I do have an obligation to do as much as is in my power. By rushing to Haiti with food and medicine we are doing a wonderful thing – but if we think that once we’ve bandaged them up and given them a meal that we’re all done, then we are sadly mistaken. And we are, additionally, just set up to have to do it all over again, until we get it right.

We, the people of the United States of America, cannot solve all problems – but we can solve this problem. Haitians are not the particular problem – those who live in the United States are some of our hardest working citizens. But, some how, back in Haiti these same splendid people can’t seem to climb out of squalor. What gives? Simple – in the United States, defective as it is, there is a government which ensures that justice is done and malfeasance is punished. Anyone who puts up a building which pancakes in an earthquake is at least open to civil penalty, and maybe for criminal liability. There is no such thing in Haiti – and, two centuries on, we have to admit that it won’t spring up naturally in that country.

What they can’t do for themselves, at the moment, is precisely what we are morally required to do if we can. Can we turn Haiti in to a protectorate and provide that justice and honesty in government which will allow the people of Haiti to both flourish and learn the value of honest government? Certainly, we can – and it would be, in any case, less expensive than having to rush to the rescue every few years, as is now the case.

We have to let go of a false morality which says that a nation, as such, has a right to complete self-determination. Most nations do – but most nations can also ensure that buildings are constructed with at least minimal safety in mind. It is also false morality to state that we dare not judge the society of Haiti by our own standards – that is just a cowardly dodge by which we pretend we don’t have an obligation, when we actually do. We must embrace the truth – and the truth is that millions of our brothers and sisters in Haiti are suffering, quite needlessly, simply because of the failure of good people to act in time.

It is time to step in. It is time to really help the long suffering people of Haiti – to rescue them not only from their current distress, but from their societal inability to construct a responsible government. This can be done – and the Haitian people can take their rightful place in the world…free, prosperous and able to completely look after their own affairs. But it can’t happen by incantation – we can’t just talk about good government in Haiti; we’re going to have to impose it.

Or, be right back where we are, today, a few years from now.

UPDATE: The Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund is up and running

Cross Posted: Noonan for Nevada

I guess I should have been watching TV yesterday rather than out on the golf course (I went after Church). Hume calls Woods to embrace Christ, and the world goes mad. The Anchoress covers the whole issue very well. The nutshell:

Hume had to know, when he was making his remarks, that he was opening himself (and to an extent, all of Christianity) for some criticism and ridicule; perhaps he expected that his remarks would foment debate and dialogue. As we see, though, from our Buddhist friends, Ms. O’ Brien, Charles Martin, and from Americablog, first reactions to his remarks have either completely misconstrued his intent (stone-throwing?) or his meaning (unproductive-faith-alone?) or his message (“Republican” Christians don’t sin?), and so any dialogue will begin with a deficit in understanding, on both sides.

Speaking only from my own perspective as a Christian, it seems to me there are a lot of non-Christians out there who really don’t understand Christianity, or the mystery and purpose of Christ, and this is partly the fault of Christians. If we lived our creed better, preaching the gospel by the way we live our lives, and by our love, then perhaps those who currently distrust us enough to be satisfied with incuriousness and stereotypes, would not be so quick to jump to the worst conclusions when a fellow like Hume speaks -very gently, it must be said, without stoning or consignment to flames of woe- on the Christian application to the human condition.

Should Hume have said what he did, on the air? I am a little ambivilent about it.

On one hand, as a Christian, I admire it; Hume put himself out there, as “a fool for Christ,” willing to face ridicule and scorn for his faith. On the other hand, I’m not comfortable with the venue. I don’t think I would like it if, for example, Christopher Hitchens suggested to Tiger, “don’t worry about it, there is no God, anyway,” or if some Muslim used a news broadcast to suggest that Woods should turn to Islam. As the writer at Americablog suggested, minding the salvation of Tiger Woods this is not Hume’s job as a newscaster.

It is his job as a Christian, however, and Hume might have done better, in a host of ways, by contacting Woods privately, and offering to pray for him (as he is likely already doing) and perhaps introducing Woods to the Good Shepherd, in the process.

But we don’t know everything…

And, indeed, we don’t know everything – but we Christians do know this much: Tiger Woods has a burden upon his back which can only be lifted, and made good, by grace. There’s nothing Woods can do to fix the problem as he can’t un-cheat on his wife. To be sure, he can make amends – to his wife and children, as well as to the women he so badly used – but he can’t make it good. He can’t make it, that is, as if it had never been. Only God can do that – and He’ll do it, just for the asking. The real trouble is getting someone to ask.

And I mean to really ask – not just a perfunctory “God forgive me so I can get out of this jam” but more along the lines of “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life. Amen.” At first glance, it doesn’t sound like all that much, but in such an act of contrition there is no escape – you are taking full responsibility, offering no mitigating circumstances and understanding that what you’ve done wrong is to betray God, who created you as an act of love. As the only person actually offended by our sins is God, only God can make them as if they had never been. And thus, Christ.

And, so, Brit Hume – having felt the redeeming power of the Lord, offers it to Tiger Woods. Some people are saying this is out of order – that it is not Hume’s place to speak, and that Christianity has no superior claim to other faiths. Well, no. At least, such is not how Christians view the matter. Hume may have spoken out of turn but that is the nature of Christian morality – to speak out of turn. In fact, to speak at the most inconvenient time possible. To ask us to refrain is pointless – to demand we refrain because we, ourselves, often fail the test is laughable. To insist that we all attempt to live up to our own ethic, that is mere kindness to us.

My favorite quote about doing well for others:

HAMLET
‘Tis well: I’ll have thee speak out the rest soon.
Good my lord, will you see the players well
bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for
they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the
time: after your death you were better have a bad
epitaph than their ill report while you live.

LORD POLONIUS
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

HAMLET
God’s bodykins, man, much better: use every man
after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?
Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less
they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
Take them in. Hamlet, Act II

And who among us, indeed, is not worthy of a whipping? Think about it. And then be patient when someone errs around you.

For all of those who say that we don’t have a purpose in a fight for someone else’s liberty:

To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin. – St Thomas Aquinas

No surprise in our Age of Lies:

It has been an interesting time around the Washington, D.C., area these last few weeks.

The District of Columbia City Council passed a law restricting the ability of Catholic Charities to continue its same level of social services to the city’s poor and homeless.

The Baltimore City Council passed a bill subjecting crisis pregnancy centers to a $150-a-day fine for not posting signs stating what services they do not offer.

Suburban Montgomery County Council is considering legislation to impose a $750-a-day fine (it is, after all, one of the richest areas in the United States) on pro-life pregnancy centers for not stating they do not provide medical advice or establish a doctor-patient relationship.

So far there’s no indication that Home Depot stores will be required to post signs that they do not perform brain surgery or that Pizza Hut franchises will be mandated to advise patrons they do not offer home loans.

Mandating that organizations must say what they do not do is ludicrous (if not unconstitutional).

What is happening here is an orchestrated plan on the left to either force everyone to agree to the left’s view of morality, or to legislate out of the public square any group which refuses. Its not so much that the left loves gay marriage or abortion but that they hate religion in general, Christianity in particular, and Catholicism in super-particular. The left, where it rules the roost, could easily write laws to give consideration to religious bodies who provide vital social services, if not all the services the left would prefer – but when faced with a choice between helping a poor, unwed mother or attacking the Catholic Church, the left doesn’t hesitate: attacking the Church takes priority over all else.

And, after all, the only people who suffer from these decisions are poor people – and poor people don’t register, as people, on the social radar of the left. Who cares if a poor girl in DC can’t get some help? She won’t be at the party’s in the swank sections of town. Heck, such a girl barely even registers as human to rich liberals – she’s kinda like a cow, to be taken care of, to be sure, but not at the price of being unfashionable on such issues as gay marriage.

When we battle the left, what we are ultimately doing is battling for basic, human decency. For the concept that each individual is valuable in and of themselves – not valued only as they fit in to a sociological or electoral calculus.

For those who would compromise core belief:

“What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? What could one give in exchange for his life? Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”- Mark 8:36-38

…like homosexuality and religion:

A California mayor’s comments saying that homosexuals are committing sin that will keep them out of heaven have caused uproar among activists…

…In a Nov. 16 interview with the New York Times, Mayor Osby Davis of Vallejo, California discussed issues of religion and politics in the Bay Area city of 120,000 people, the California Catholic Daily reports.

Discussion turned to the school board candidate Bishop Lou A. Bordisso, an openly homosexual prelate in the American Catholic Church, a church not in communion with Rome…

…Asked by the New York Times whether there are some faith communities “where gay people are not welcome,” Davis replied that God loves “anyone who is gay and anyone who is not gay.”

“The sins that keep you out of heaven are not the just those sins of being gay, those are sins of lying, murdering, unforgiving, all kinds of sins… So when you look at someone who is gay, you see them as someone Christ died for and you look at them as if they are in fact committing sin and that sin will keep them out of heaven.”

So, what is happening? Well, some people in the gay rights community and sympathizers are demanding the mayor resign or that the city recognize “gay pride” day…which is, in the end, a way of saying that the city should honor some people for speaking up about their sexual views while condemning the mayor – and, by extension, all Christians – for speaking up about their sexual views. Thus the weird world of the Age of Lies we live in.

Of course, all the mayor is saying is basic, Christian truth – it is not what you are which keeps you out of heaven, but what you do. You can be gay until the cows come home and get in to heaven – what will keep you out, if you are to be kept out, is your actions…the things you consciously choose to do knowing as you do them that they are wrong, and then you never seek forgiveness…never have a contrite heart over your errors. This isn’t hate, as some gay activists might put it – its the old, old Christian ideal of hating the sin, loving the sinner. If you don’t like this worldview, then you’ve got a major malfunction of your own to deal with.

There is a great simplicity in Christianity – Christ died for the remission of our sins and all those who believe in Christ will be redeemed. But what, exactly, constitutes belief in Christ? Who has really accepted Christ? While we can make some solid assumptions about some people who are likely in heaven – we call them Saints in the Catholic faith; thus St. Francis is someone we are as certain as any human can be that he’s in heaven – we can’t really say for certain if any particular person is in hell. Even the very worst sinners may have had an act of genuine contrition before death and even at the last moment have accepted the salvation Jesus offers to all of us. We can see lots of indicators that a person has rejected salvation, but we don’t know if they really have.

The problem here is that some people, it would seem, want us to say that what we know is bad – sexual relations outside of marriage and cut off from the gift of life – are good and won’t in any way risk a person’s salvation. Or, failing our public assertion of this, we are to keep silent about our views. This is un-American – and, also, counter-productive. Everyone must know what everyone else is about – if you are gay, you must know that I, as a Christian, condemn utterly homosexual relations. It wouldn’t be fair for me to hide such a view from you – and it would be unfair to the gay person to not have the alternative view placed in front of him…because unless there is a multiple of things to choose, there is no choice.

It just gets worse and worse:

New details on President Barack Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings have emerged, as an eye-witness has finally broken her silence and says that Jennings was present at Tufts University during the infamous “Fistgate” scandal, and says that he bears personal responsibility for the event.

Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit reports that a Massachusetts teacher – who remains anonymous out of concern for herself and her family – told him that she saw Jennings in 2000 at the 10 Year Anniversary Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN)/Boston conference at Tufts University.

At that time Jennings was the executive director of GLSEN, an organization which he founded. The event, cosponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education, featured a youth workshop on sex, specifically targeting 14-21-year-olds. During that workshop GLSEN presenters taught youth how to perform a dangerous sexual practice known as “fisting” – a practice so obscene that it cannot be described here.

This is just an outrage – first, that anyone like Jennings would ever be considered for a White House position. Second, that as soon as this comes out, he’s not forced to quit.

The man has a sick, twisted agenda of normalizing men having sex with boys – he’s a predator who has dressed himself up as an educator and liberals, naturally, have fallen for it. But rational people now have to take a stand – and Jennings has to go.

UPDATE, by Matt Margolis: What’s really sad is the way some on the left actually defend that sicko.

Gay Patriot reports on the election in Houston of a conservative lesbian to be mayor:

When the LA Times called Annise Parker, Houston’s Mayor-Elect “conservative,” I thought that maybe this lesbian is a Republican, but, alas, she is not. In the Space City’s mayoral runoff yesterday, she “defeated former City Attorney Gene Locke on an austere platform, convincing voters that her financial bona fides and restrained promises would be best suited in trying financial times.”…

…She wasn’t running as the lesbian candidate for Mayor, but as a prudent manager of the city’s finances who happened to be lesbian. Her victory seems to be emblematic of the changing attitudes toward gays, that if gay and lesbian candidates run for office on issues of concern to voters in their jurisdiction, where their sexuality is incidental to their political philosophy and campaign platform, voters will look past their sexuality and consider the merits of their person and their policy proposals.

With Mayor-Elect Parker’s background in financial management and commitment to sound budgetary policies, it looks like, come January 1, the City of Houston will be in good hands.

Gay Patriot does note that she was opposed by some in the religious right, but I find nothing from the largest groups (Catholic League, Focus on the Family, Christian Coalition, eg) about the election – so, I’ll put down the opposition to her from Christian groups as a minor issue, and it certainly didn’t sway the electorate. The bone of contention for the Christian groups in opposition was a worry that Parker might revive an old battle about domestic partnership benefits. She might, for all I know, but she didn’t campaign on it – and if she’s got any sense at all, she’ll leave that sleeping dog to lie, at least through her first term. Read the rest of this entry »